Thematic Focus: Country of Origin Information Resources

COI Forum (ecoi.net, Asylum Research Consultancy & Dutch Council for Refugees) [access]
- "The COI Forum is a free online tool for all COI researchers and users of COI working in refugee status determination to share publications and ideas on COI research and sources, as well as to develop shared resources." Follow the link for more information on how to join this forum.  Other COI-related discussion groups are invited to make use of the ecoi.net platform.

Country Information and Guidance (UK Home Office) [access]
- The Home Office has been producing Operational Guidance Notes (OGN) for some time now, but has recently changed the format of the reports.  So far, four reports based on the new format have been made available: Kuwaiti Bidoon (Feb. 2014), Somalia (April 2014), Uganda: Claims Based on Sexual Orientation (April 2014?) and China: Christians (June 2014).  In April, the Independent Advisory Group on Country Information issued a tender for evaluations of the Kuwait and Somalia reports; these should be completed in mid-June 2014.

Right to Asylum Guide - Gender-based Persecution: Information on Countries of Origin within the Framework of the Right to Asylum (CEAR-Euskadi) [access]
- "[A] practical reference tool that systematises the sources of information on the country of origin, laying special emphasis on the situation of women and the LGTTBI population."

Watch for:

Adjudicating Refugee and Asylum Status: The Role of Witness, Expertise, and Testimony (Cambridge University Press, Nov. 2014) [info]
- "In this book, an array of legal, biomedical, psychosocial, and social science scholars and practitioners offer the first comparative account of the increasing dependence on expertise in the asylum and refugee status determination process. ...The authors draw upon their interactions with expertise and the immigration process to provide insights into the evidentiary burdens on asylum seekers and the expanding role of expertise in the forms of country-conditions reports, biomedical and psychiatric evaluations, and the emerging field of forensic linguistic analysis in response to emerging forms of persecution, such as gender-based or sexuality-based persecution."

Related post:
- Thematic Focus: Country of Origin Information/Evidence (2 Dec. 2013)

Tagged Publications and Web Sites/Tools.